Task 6a - Critical Reflection on piloting a Focus Group

I conducted my first Focus Group this week as a pilot to analysis the relative merits and limits regarding how this tool may address my question, has anyone else found conducting the pilots had exposed significant merits and/or limits?

Blogging my reflections on my first pilot focus group, critically assessing my own personal performance in how I approached this tool of enquiry has been eye opening. Discovering through this trial process the specific characteristics of the proposed tools is helping to formulate a plan as to how best to plan my enquiry research, hope others may find parts of this blog useful, let me know what you think!

(Evaluation of the pilot Focus Group are in note form below)

My Question:

What does Dance mean (to the users of Ludus Dance)?

My inquiry is looking into what Dance means to everyone as individuals, implications of my question are only really understood and comprehended through appropriate application of the suggested tools.

  Key factor for me is the foundation for a topic such as mine is in the researcher respecting the ideas that dance means something different to everyone. Ideally, I want to get people to feel at ease and ‘open – up’ to discuss their personal feelings towards dance.

In all aspects of my enquiry, I must ensure participants feel they are entitled to openly share their opinions, and that these opinions will not be judged, aiming to gather the widest variety of data.

In terms of understanding my question, although I have personal passion for sharing the joy of Dance, care must be taken to not force my ideas onto participants. This may suppress creativity and have negative effects on my research.

To sum up, engagement in dance is an inter personal experience, and everyone has the right to ownership of their own experiences, I am ultimately wanting to share their experience and not force mine upon them if I wish to succeed in a successful, ethical and unbiased enquiry.

Focus Group

Why I chose this tool:

- Each member of the group can bring very different dynamics in their interaction, there is huge potential of a range of opinions to be voiced, effective way of developing my line of enquiry.

-Being a dance teacher, having a tool which could be piloted in the work situation was convenient, considered my position of being a familiar face a bonus to encouraging freedom of expression and speech from participants.

-It was the only research tool I have never practised or experienced myself; not knowing what direction it could take to develop my enquiry persuaded me to try this method first.

Preparation

-          Under the knowledge that focus groups are useful to explore interactions between groups of people with similar characteristics and experiences. So, piloting this tool with a group of three students from the school in which I teach seemed appropriate. They are similar ages, all girls, attend similar classes and have similar dance style interests.

-          Considered that my preparation would be key – wanted to develop a supportive atmosphere in order to collect group responses and encourage interaction with opinions of personal connections to engagement in Dance.

-          Consideration of an appropriate setting to ensure creating a calm, relaxed environment with equal power relationships between all involved. Decision to use a familiar studio space just after a class, being on ‘home’ ground I hoped would ease feeling comfortable and open.

-          Format or some structured questions to follow were thought about before hand, although being a wear that in the situation other topics may be addressed, so being able to adapt and go with the ‘flow’ would be important. Up to me as the facilitator to effectively channel the discussion to gather most useful data.

Reflections after the pilot, how will this enquiry tool address my question?:

-          Found being the moderator/facilitator quite testing, hopefully more pilots would enable me to work at always providing the right ‘trigger’ questions so discussion is channelled to discover valuable data.

-          Lucky to have three personalities that gelled and encouraged one another, in future focus group situations, having one personality stronger than another may dramatically affect the validity of data collected as less assertive members may experience difficulty in expressing their views. 

-          Initial approach of how the focus group will work and the direction it may take seemed key. To alleviate problems of people talking over one another, the decision to ask each member to introduce themselves individually set the correct tone – everyone’s opinion is as valid as everyone else’s.

-          Appropriate consideration to executing the group in familiar surroundings seemed to set a tone of feeling comfortable, being on ‘home’ ground created a sense of ease within the group. Willingness to contribute personal views was never a problem, possibly even the fact that we all sat together on the floor created a sense of equality and a feeling of being in a relaxed atmosphere where no judgements would be made or assumed.

-          Found the focus groups link very closely when considering developing a Questionnaire, asking the pre-planned structured questions lead to more developed questions coming from different angles being noted. E.g, I asked Why do you keep coming back to Dance lessons?  Listening to their answers and observing body language triggered me to ask for more in depth explanations. (It was felt by one dance  is ‘exercise without realising it, not like Netball at School’, discussion then flowed into why dance activity was different, and issues such as dance not being  as competitive as other sports offered were addressed. From this, I would consider developing a question on a survey or questionnaire around this.

-          Being the moderator, I found my own use of body language and choice of verbal language key. Use of encouraging motions, both verbal and non verbal stimulated participants to share their experiences more openly. Noting that on more than once occasion, re-prompting a participant with use of their words and phrases gave room for further explanation that I felt I wanted to clarify. For this tool to be used to its greatest effectiveness, as the facilitator, continued use of positivity for the opinions being voices and a sense of showing interest and respect for the individuals inter personal experiences is key.

-          Being a wear that there may be a tendency to want to share my experiences, application of when this may or may not be appropriate. On one hand, I experienced difficulty to always keep my reasons for participation in dance quiet, one must not have an expectancy that others share what you feel.  On the other hand, in one circumstance, sharing of one personal view set the ball rolling that total honesty is OK! (I explained honestly the primary reason I started to dance was reluctantly being dragged by my mother at a very young age – this appreciation that even me as the researcher, exposure to dance has been completely co incidental, enabled other members to speak more freely about why they began to Dance). Could be a tendency for them to say what they think they want the researcher to think, again affecting validity of the data collected.

How would I change my approach to improve the effectiveness?

-          Add more members – more members of a group would provide different dynamics. Perhaps ensuring to involve both genders for example could be beneficial at exposing more view and opinions of why people Dance. Increased interaction between the group may be tackled by having larger number participate.

-          Recording the process was extremely useful for future reference, it also meant I could maintain eye focus with participants and equal engagement between all members was therefore evident. However video recordings may have been more accurate when analysing the data, personal experiences and opinions are often expressed through body language, some of these crucial observations may have been missed.

-          Having a gate keeper – a figure such as the principle of the school may have been effective in setting a more formal and official tone in future. A parent was asked if they would be happy to take this role, however once in the situation decided to opt out so as not to distract from the groups focus, or make participants feel obliged to answer in a certain way.

-          More consideration into the order of questions asked would have been appropriate. Again, preparation and planning a structured sequence of questions that flow will allow for a smooth group discussion. Adaptability of the researcher is key, the qualities needed are not only to plan follow a framework which one can always refer back too, but having the ability to think on the spot to ask more in-depth questions that evolve during topical discussion.

Summery

Data collected was so diverse and varied, analysis of it will develop my understanding of my enquiry hugely. With an enquiry such as mine, which is fundamentality one based on personal opinions without a definite right or wrong answer needs in depth, varied data when considering how to make my results measurable. Focus groups are definitely a tool I envisage using in the future, by experimenting with piloting one my understanding of how this tools relate to my personal workplace and specific dance sector knowledge as an insider researcher.